Gulf Arab states may have a single Shariah board for the region's Islamic financial institutions by 2013 to standardize the industry and increase services available to Muslims, a Shariah scholar said.

Gulf Arab countries need a supreme Shariah council to give the industry a direction, because we would be concentrated less on proving other Shariah scholars wrong and more on using the Shariah to create more products, said Hussain Hamed Hassan, who heads Dubai Islamic Bank's shariah committee.

Regulators around the world, including Bahrain and Malaysia, are looking for ways to better evaluate risks of the Islamic banking industry and make products suitable for investors globally. Malaysia's central bank is preparing a system that would enable cross-border transactions among Islamic financial institutions, Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said in May.